Hanry

The French sextet introducing post-rock to their hometown via Washington and Norway

Every year KEXP, the radio station and YouTube channel based out of the University Of

Washington in the US, crosses the Atlantic to visit the Trans Musicales festival in Rennes, Brittany, on the hunt for new talent to showcase. At the December 2023 festival, KEXP filmed a live session with instrumental post-rock sextet Hanry, performing three tracks from their debut EP //Panorama//. That video landed Hanry a deal with Germany’s Pelagic Records, with whom the band just released their second EP, //Disruption//.

For //Panorama//, founding guitarist Anthony Leliard created full demos, but the writing for //Disruption// became more collaborative. “We went in the studio, playing instruments, making loops, we wanted to find new ideas in the studio live,” says guitarist Jean-Anael Aubaux. “It’s more about improvisation, jamming, we find a loop, okay, that’s good, let’s make a song with that.”

The six-piece creates a widescreen, expansive sound, layered with shifting colours and textures. “You can do everything you want in the studio, it’s really like a laboratory,” says Aubaux. “You have your chemicals and mix them all together.” Aubaux and drummer Clément Champigny are sound engineers with their own recording facilities, although while they all embrace the studio as a creative instrument, they want to capture the excitement of playing together even when tracking their instruments individually. “We’re trying to always keep the energy and the dynamics,” says Champigny. “We don’t have limits in the studio. We’ll see later if we can play it live.”

The 2023 festival performance marked a watershed moment in the group’s career, but it had its own special kind of pressure for the musicians. “It’s our hometown, so it’s always different when you know the people in front of you,” says Champigny. “The Trans Musicales show was incredible for us and for the people too. We didn’t feel it while we were playing onstage but just after, everyone was talking about it, ‘Did you see that band? It was crazy!’ A lot of people in the audience didn’t know about post-rock music. They just discovered it at that time. It was a huge success for us to make someone discover this kind of music and then like it.”

The band is hard at work writing for their debut album, aiming for a sound that keyboardist Marc Mifune calls, “Atmospheric, cinematic.” Inspired by the soundtracks from the films of David Fincher and David Lynch, and Hans Zimmer’s scores, Aubaux says, “It’s all about dynamics. We want really loud parts but obviously you can’t listen to loud parts for fifty minutes. You need all the peaks and valleys. Producing themselves means that Hanry are not watching the clock, but that’s not without its own pitfalls. “There’s one song on the EP we worked on the day before the mastering session. It’s never ending,” says Aubaux. “It’s hard to have something and say ‘Okay, it’s done, it’s finished,’ and not touch it anymore. Sometimes it’s great to have someone in the studio to say, ‘Hey guys, stop it!’” DW

Prog File

Line-Up: Jean-Anaël Aubaux (guitar), Hadrien Benazet (guitar), Clément Champigny (drums), Mathilde Lejas (bass), Anthony Leliard (guitar), Marc Mifune (keyboards)

Sounds Like: The soundtrack to the midnight screening of a forgotten indie sci-fi movie with sweeping soundscapes, widescreen melodies, and emotionally loaded bursts of post-rock riffage.

Current Release: //Disruption// EP is out now from Pelagic Records.

Website: hanry.bandcamp.com

— David West